A BLOCK-CENTERED UPWIND APPROXIMATION OF THE SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICE PROBLEM ON A DYNAMICALLY CHANGING MESH

The numerical simulation of a three-dimensional semiconductor device is a fundamental problem in information science. The mathematical model is defined by an initialboundary nonlinear system of four partial differential equations: an elliptic equation for electric potential, two convection-diffusion equations for electron concentration and hole concentration, and a heat conduction equation for temperature. The first equation is solved by the conservative block-centered method. The concentrations and temperature are computed by the block-centered upwind difference method on a changing mesh, where the block-centered method and upwind approximation are used to discretize the diffusion and convection, respectively. The computations on a changing mesh show very well the local special properties nearby the P-N junction. The upwind scheme is applied to approximate the convection, and numerical dispersion and nonphysical oscillation are avoided. The block-centered difference computes concentrations, temperature, and their adjoint vector functions simultaneously.The local conservation of mass, an important rule in the numerical simulation of a semiconductor device, is preserved during the computations. An optimal order convergence is obtained. Numerical examples are provided to show efficiency and application.